After 30 pages of pleasant chatter, this chapter will come to the following conclusion:
b The appeal of the story is an evolved, innate adaptation: universal, intensely pleasurable, emerging spontaneously in childhood in ways that (like the deep structure of speech) are already so logically complex even in childrenbs play that they require an explanation in terms of innate capacities. That it remains possible today to be engaged, amused, or moved by a story told by a single speaker b next to a campfire or around a water cooler, or across a dinner table b shows us that with regard to fiction, we remain the same people as our prehistoric ancestorsb How could this statement be wrong? First, Ibm not convinced about the b logical complexityb of childrenbs play. Dutton gives the example shared by the psychologist, Alan M. Leslie, who attended a childrenbs imaginary tea party, knocked over a tea cup filled with imaginary tea, and then asked the three-year old to refill the empty cup. Was it really such a feat of logical complexity for that child to pretend-fill the only cup that was pretend-empty (instead of all the other cups that were pretend-full but actually empty?) I donbt know b but I suppose it is remarkable that young children love to play with their imagination, just like kittens want to chase balls of yarn. Then, Dutton asks us adults to imagine the possibility that humans would only like to apply their big brained imaginations to issues with practical consequences. That would certainly seem to meet the basic evolutionary requirement of survival: how to get whatbs needed while avoiding disaster. But instead, for some reason (while Dutton will explore) we just like to play a make believe. Over and over and over again b with a b disinterestednessb that Dutton credits to Kant for noting. And I suppose this kind of play is as instinctive as language b but how can we attribute it to the adapted survival of our ancestors in the Pleistocene? (concerning which, we can only speculate) And what is it about a story that makes it so appealing to human minds? Literary theorist b Michelle Sugiyama argues that information transmission, including methods of problem solving, was a central adaptive benefit of imaginative storytelling for our ancestorsb Another literary theorist, Lisa Zunshine, focuses on how fiction b engages, teases, and pushes to its tentative limits our mind reading capacityb b which is expressed by evolutionary literary theorist, Joseph Carroll as the ability to b regulate our complex psychological organization, and help us cultivate our socially adaptive capacity for entering mentally into the experience of othersb b& b and thus form a point of intersection between the most emotional, subjective parts of the mind and the most abstract and cerebralb (BTW b as you may recall, Ayn Rand said pretty much the same thing, even if we find her application of that principle in her own fiction to be crushingly boring) Fiction provides us with templates for emotional life, which Carroll says b must be emotionally saturated, imaginatively vividb b and Dutton adds b emotional feeling is normally coextensive with the experience of a work of artb I like that notion! Because it does seem to account for my own love of fiction b as well as offering a principle by which it may be critiqued. And I like Duttonbs further discussion of this, relating it to Hindustani music, the book-needing characters in Dickensian fiction, as well as the necessarily emotive scores for modern movies. (page 124) Apparently, like Cheerskep, Joseph Carroll was especially moved by b Pride and Prejudiceb and he wrote a long explanation of why it is so effective (which I plan to read right after reading the novel, sometime next year.) Dutton also offers some theories about b the innate tendencies in the structure of storiesb , though, like him, all that I can conclude is that b the basic themes and situations of fiction are a product of the fundamental, evolved interests human beings have in love, death, adventure, family, justice, and overcoming adversityb I certainly canbt agree with Christopher Bookerbs list of the b seven b or nine - basic plot templatesb : Overcoming the monster, Rags to riches, Quest, Voyage and return, the Comedy of resolved confusion, the Tragedy that befalls human overreaching, Rebirth (like Dostoyevskybs Rasknolikov), the Rebellion of 1984, and the b Mysteryb of detective novels. Which not only fails to include much of modern fiction, but also ignores some of the most famous books of Asian fiction b in which the presence of plot, itself, is problematic. (can anyone tell us the plot of "Dream of Red Chamber" or "Singsong Girls of Shanghai"?) Which does not seem to concern Dutton, who happily follows Aristotle as he claims "in cinema today, it is still the story told (i.e. "arresting plot") that makes the greatest films" So, yes, I am ambivalent about Dutton's pleasant chatter -- but I do plan on reading what Joseph Carroll has had to say about how a story can be appealing. ____________________________________________________________ Weight Loss Program Best Weight Loss Program - Click Here! http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2231/c?cp=bqRt_EPfOt2JA_QXyfY1eAAAJz6c l_zTaptgNR5c8Mer1v9kAAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEUgAAAAA=
